The Teutonic Cross Launches Aug. 1, 2013

COLUMBIA, Mo. – Silver Tongue Press delves into race relations with a launch party to celebrate the publication of the historical murder mystery, The Teutonic Cross, at 8 p.m. CST August 1 on Facebook. The novel by James F. Muench, a long-time resident of Columbia, Mo., tells the story of Heinrich Kueter’s efforts to find the murderer of an exchange student in a small Missouri college town on the eve of World War I. The young history professor of German immigrant ancestry solves the mystery while standing against racism, fighting a corrupt local politician and wooing a local suffragette. It is the first novel and second book for a descendent of Friedrich Muench, a political leader of the Missouri Germans. “Missouri is the quintessential center of America, with aspects that are eastern, western, northern and southern,” Muench said. “It’s the crossroads of America that everybody came through whether they were staying or heading farther west. And it’s where my ancestors settled.” Celestial Book Promotions will begin the launch party during which attendees may ask questions of the author. To join the launch party, simply fill in the contact form for The Teutonic Cross virtual book tour on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/events/442675599178954/. Silver Tongue Press is a publishing company in Milwaukee, Wisc. To purchase the novel, go to http://www.silvertonguepress.com/shopping-center/. ###

October 24, 2012 TO BE OR NOT TO BE: THE CASE OF THE MISSING POSTER It was just another weekday morning in 1980 when Jenni Teel strode into her classroom to teach her sophomore English class at Shawnee Mission East. It was also the day she lost one of her prized possessions – a souvenir poster of William Shakespeare she had purchased at his Stratford-upon-Avon birthplace during a trip to England. When she walked into class that terrible day, she realized the Bard had apparently been pinched from his honored perch on her classroom wall. And she’s wondered about the mystery of the disappearing playwright ever since. She reminded Jim Muench and Grey Endres about her missing memento when they met her for dinner Friday evening before the 1982 SME 30th reunion party.

“I’ve always wondered what happened to it,” she said. “Do you guys know anything?” The two washed-up refugees from tortured high school careers in the 1980s shrugged their shoulders, having forgotten the incident long ago. They gave each other quizzical looks, even more quizzical than usual because of the beer they had consumed. Muench promised to ask around, and Endres posted a question about it on Facebook. Teel, who now goes by her Hawaiian name of Kainey and teaches in the Shawnee Mission Horizons program, said she wouldn’t make a federal case about the alleged theft. But if anybody in the class of 1982 has information, she would appreciate knowing what happened to her beloved, kidnapped Willy S. If you can no longer endure the blood and guilt on your hands (come on, how often do you get to make a Lady MacBeth joke?), feel free to email her at kaineyteel@cs.com. As a consolation replacement, with permission from Columbia, Mo.’s most famous eatery, Muench created a special poster in her honor and sent it to Kainey Teel. ###

I watched David Stockman, Ronald Reagan's former director of the Office of Management and Budget, give an interview on "The Ed Show." He basically aligns with the Democratic position now, questioning bloated military spending and Republican efforts to gut Social Security and other social programs. It just shows how far rightward the the Republicans have moved under the Tea Party. It's rather sad that the GOP has fallen so far. It's a shame, but Republicans are no longer a party of reasonable people.

A recent episode of HBO's "The Newsroom" made me think about how the Internet has changed our brain patterns. Will McAvoy, the anchorman, complains that "you can't browse anymore." In other words, you can't just open up the encyclopedia anymore and start randomly looking through the collected knowledge of mankind. You have to know what you are looking for already.

I've always enjoyed the library, for instance, because even when I was looking for something specific, I would often stumble on something else that I wanted to read -- usually something that had nothing to do with what I was looking for in the first place.

That's what I teach my journalism students too. A journalist needs to know a little about a lot of different things. "Go out and learn stuff," I tell them. The breathtaking amount of information available to them is wonderful, but in an odd way, the Internet makes it more difficult to be a generalist.

The influence of Twitter upon our news concerns me. Now ledes (the first paragraph of a news story) have to be 21 to 25 words or less, when they used to be 30 to 35 words or less. Why? Twitter.

Even more disconcerting: when I ask my students where they get their news, they tell me "Twitter." While I have nothing against the tool itself, if that's where they get their news, it means they're getting only those news items in which they are most interested.

The situation is bound to create tunnel vision. Reading a traditional newspaper at least exposes you to stories about which you might have no interest, but which are important nevertheless. It exposes you to what some experienced newsperson or newspeople (what goes in is often the work of a committee) think is important.

The message is that the news is not all about you as an individual. It's a collective, social pool of information about what is going on in the world. It's what makes for community. And that emphasis is disappearing in our effort to make knowledge, including news, more personalized.

So is it any wonder our political system is deadlocked? If even the news is "all about me," it's not too far of an intellectual leap to wind up at "Why compromise with other people?" After all, my needs are the only ones that matter, right?

If the underlying message of our information system is that we are all just selfish individuals who do not need to pay attention to the ideas of others, we are in serious trouble as a society. How can we be Good Samaritans and good stewards of the public trust if we do not care about others' needs or ideas?

As Americans, we need to understand that we are being played by our wealthiest people, who can afford to purchase representatives in Congress to do their bidding.

My wife has been taking continuing education courses in financial planning, and it has been an eye-opening experience. The entire field is based on helping rich people avoid paying their fair share of taxes. Wealthy people get breaks that nobody else does. For example, they can afford to offshore their money; most of us can't.

Yet the wealthy want more. For instance, they want to repeal the estate tax. You know, the "death tax" that so many conservatives rail against as being an attack on small farmers -- it only applies to estates worth more than $1.5 million, effecting about 1 percent of estates. And noted conservative Winston Churchill was for it.

Social Security provides another example. Because of its wage-base threshold of $106,800, above which earnings are not taxable, a billionaire pays the same amount of Social Security tax as somebody who earns $106,800. Simply removing that threshold would solve the lion's share of the solvency question.

As someone nearing age 50, I am naturally concerned that my family won't receive Social Security benefits, even though my wife and I have paid into the system over much of our lives, because of plans such as that espoused by Paul Ryan. However, he and Romney soothingly tell me that I shouldn't be concerned because people over 55 won't be affected. Well, that makes me feel so much better.

The fact is that their idea to pass on the costs of retirement care to our children -- merely to give the wealthiest Americans another tax cut -- is just plain immoral.

Anyone who saw "Animal House," the movie upon which so many of my classmates based their college careers, probably remembers the statue of college founder Emil Faber, with his blatantly obvious quote: "Knowledge is Good."

Incidentally, the University of Nebraska still follows that wisdom by putting the "N" on its helmets (the "N" stands for "nollej").

As it has often been said in the past, if you aren't learning, you are probably dead... ...or watching Fox News...

The Republicans have every right to follow the first two prongs of their strategy to win the White House in November. If they want to win by tanking the economy -- killing our credit rating and fighting every Obama initiative to get our economy in gear, that's legitimate -- craven, but legitimate. And if they want to spend yacht-loads of their uber-rich supporters' cash on false advertising, that doesn't frighten me either. If they want to pursue an ideology in which government is always evil, that's also fair game.

Republicans have the right to sell out their power to their uber-rich supporters as payoff for further rigging the tax structure so that the "one percenters" don't have to pay their fair share in taxes. If, as Romney and Ryan have proposed, that the one percenters should get another $300,000 each a year, and they can con people into voting for it, so be it. They also have every right to swindle middle class people into voting against their own interests if they can; in America, you can believe whatever you want, no matter how stupid. Such action may be morally wrong, but it's totally fair.The truly frightening tactic, however, is their effort to thwart the constitutional RIGHT to vote. Several Republicans have been actually quoted as saying that voting is a PRIVILEGE. Although forgetting grade school civics is not a crime, ignoring or thwarting the constitution is. Voting is not a privilege; voting is a right.

What a great ticket for the Grey Poupon set! If you like to fire people, easily make $10,000 bets, build elevators for your cars in your multiple homes, own a stable of dressage horses and off-shore your money in the Cayman Islands to avoid taxes, these guys are for you. If "vacation" is a verb for you, this is your team. If you believe that government is evil and that Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, college grants and loans, and the social safety net must be destroyed, these are the candidates for you.